[news.eclipse.board.committer.reps] Re: how to address this

[Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Though a worthy topic, I do think this is off topic for this list as I 
understand it.  Might be a better topic for higgins-dev and/or ecf-dev 
or perhaps even equinox-dev.

A few thoughts on identity:

1) It's difficult to get general agreement about how identity should be 
*defined*.  This is very different, IMHO, from whether/how one presents 
a UI for identity...e.g. managing multiple identities, associating 
passwords/credentials with ones identities, etc.

2) With ECF, we've taken the approach of creating an API for the weakest 
(and simplest) notion of identity that we could get away with, but is 
still useful within the scope of our project.  For ECF, the ID contract 
simply specifies *uniqueness within an associated Namespace*.  This 
doesn't say anything of credentials, authentication, trust or any of 
those other important concepts, it just allows entities (users, 
processes, groups) to be uniquely identified across processes. 
Incidently, our ID interface extends the JAAS java.security.Principal 
interface and so is able to be used within JAAS.

For extensibility, we define an extension point in the 
org.eclipse.ecf.identity bundle to allow other bundles to implement new 
Namespaces (and also control the creation of IDs within their 
Namespace).  Comm protocol implementations define their own 
Namespaces...and their own interpretation of a given ID.  For certain 
types of communication, this gives addressability...i.e. for connecting 
to a server socket at a certain address, for retrieving a remote file or 
resource (e.g. URI), etc.

ECF's work on identity doesn't address Eugene's desire (shared by me) 
for a 'unified identity' that can interoperate among Eclipse and 
non-Eclipse-based systems.  But we think it does provide a useful 
building block/starting point for building some of these other parts of 
unified identity...addressing of remote processes (useful for 
communications/ECF project), associations (with credentials, other types 
of identities, etc), trust establishment, identity management 
interfaces, etc.  Hopefully this, along with Higgins and other efforts 
can be used to get toward more unified identity.

Best,

Scott


Eugene Kuleshov wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  I am not sure how to address this issue and looking for advice.
>
>  In development process we usually have several identities for each 
> developer and each identity is managed in its own system, such as 
> version control systems (CVS, SVN, etc), issue tracking systems 
> (Bugzilla, JIRA, etc), instant messaging systems (icq, xmpp, gtalk, 
> yahoo, skype, etc) and regular email. In IDEs each of those those 
> identities is managed by its own plugin. For example in Eclipse, CVS and 
> SVN identities are known by team version control providers, issue 
> tracking systems are managed by Mylar or specialized plugins, and 
> instant messaging identities are managed by ECF.
>
>  As a result, we don't really have links between those identities. For 
> example, we can't open an entry in the CVS History, Synchronize view or 
> CVS annotation (aka "blame" thing) in the editor and send an instant 
> message to the user who committed that change (say when he did something 
> outstanding or if he did something terrifying) or see if person who made 
> comment to the bug report is online.
>
>  We need some kind of address book or roster UI and correspond backend 
> that would allow to manage multiple user identities and would allow 3rd 
> party components to interact with those identities. The closest piece 
> Eclipse have right now is the Roster view from ECF, but it still quite 
> far from supporting such feature and it is unclear if it even in scope 
> of the ECF project.
>
>  IBM Jazz project choose different approach to this issue. since they 
> built their own issue tracker, version control system and even instant 
> messaging system they got unified identity across all those systems. 
> Unfortunately in the real world we have to deal with number of existing 
> legacy systems.
>
>  Does anyone have thoughts on this and what is the best way to address 
> this need?
>
>  regards,
>  Eugene
>
> PS: you can also comment to my blog post at 
> http://jroller.com/page/eu?entry=multiple_identies